For advertisers, she adds, the "pay-per-view" model offers the opportunity to generate much better online
advertising results by matching offers to the targeted, and probably more loyal, audience of a pay-for-
content site.
"When we're considering a site we're looking for eyeballs mostly. And certainly on a fee site, you'll get the
same eyeballs each day," says Rick White, VP, brand and marketing management at Scotiabank. "So you're
getting a better buy, a better quality audience."
However, he adds, the number of fee-based sites where you can advertise is still quite limited, so for now,
they haven't made up a large percentage of the online buy.
"Because we're focused on a more sophisticated or active investor, fee sites do make sense to us," says
Colleen Moorehead, president of E*Trade Canada, wh ich advertises on both content-free, and content-fee
sites for different purposes. The person subscribing to GlobeinvestorGold.com, for example, is serious
about it and may be in a more tightly defined segment - a segment that's more likely to parallel E*Trade's
target groups, she says.
"However," she adds, "being that you want to ensure that you've touched people everywhere, we also use
sites that may not be fee-based but are focused on our customer segments, like MoneySense."
Because E*Trade Canada has unique strategies relative to every site it supports (broad reach vs. depth of
building more consistent messaging to the key target segment), Moorehead says she is unable to appraise
ROI on fee vs. free sites. But she adds that as a Web advertiser for the past six years, E*Trade is
continuously building a collective base of learning to provide benchmarks on such issues.
The company, which counts 85,000 customers, also acts as a Web publisher, marketing its Power E*Trade
subscriber service to various customer segments: 'best' customers get access to the service for free based on
the number of trades they do per quarter, while others, who are perhaps not as active, may pay for it, says
Moorehead.
"Being able to offer transaction capabilities is a very important part of delivering high value content," she
says. "One of our key strategies is to produce original content and support it with a transaction model - that
is the killer application."
Sympatico's McLarty says there's also the potential for publishers to offer advertisers valuable data about
their users, despite whether it's fee or free. "You can get pretty granular with who is watching and
experiencing your content on the Internet. And that won't go away just because people are paying for it," he
says. Fee sites, in fact, have the opportunity to collect and share even more detailed audience data since
visitors are required to register and provide payment information.
But Ken Schafer, president and CEO of the Association of Internet Marketing and Sales Canada, says at
least initially the for-fee areas or sites will have much less advertising. "It's going to be hard to justify
plastering a page with advertising and pop-ups where a person is paying for it. There could be the potential
for long-term sponsorship-type roles.
He adds: "For the free areas, my guess is that you're going to see a lot more bombardment [of] marketing
messages.' That's a trade-off that many publishers will probably put toward their readers."
But that lack of advertising - or rather 'intrusive' advertising - on for-fee sites will be a boon to consumers
and advertisers alike, says GlobeinvestorGold's Keith. Ads currently on GlobeinvestorGold.com are
straightforward one-click banners, buttons or sponsorships from the likes of E*Trade and HSBC. "We
haven't made a big deal about it but we will," he says. "Our ads are non-intrusive compared to a lot of the
free sites, which can drive you crazy. And that's an important selling feature."
